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POKER SKILLS

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Improve Your Concentration

For being a successful poker player, you need to maintain high levels of concentration throughout a poker game. Having said that, to stay focused in long duration games, especially the ones extending beyond 45 minutes, is quite difficult. The reason is that humans can only concentrate fully for about 30 to 60 minutes at one go. There are some other reasons that often disturb you & hamper your concentration during a game viz. getting bored, any kind of distraction, sickness, lack of self-confidence, personal problems etc. Following are some of the ways that will help to boost your concentration while playing in a poker game or tournament:

Self-Talk is Important - After playing a hand, it is really helpful to talk to yourself. You can appreciate yourself if you have played a nice hand or caught another player’s tell. In this way, you will feel better from inside and even get boosted to repeat the same.

Sleep well the night before - If you don’t sleep well the night before a game, you may not feel at ease & this may eventually hamper your concentration in the middle of a very important game.

Take notes - While playing, you can note down the tasks at hand like making a record of your opponent’s hands, the size of the bet and so on. This will help you to remain engrossed in the game without getting distracted from other things like emails, phone calls, SMSs etc.

Forget about your previous loss - Our concentration is often disrupted if we think of the losses that we have just encountered. This really harms our on-going game as well. So, we should forget what had happened before & concentrate fully on the present game in order to make the most of it.

Don’t get distracted by other players’ chatting - Often while playing a game, you can face very talkative opponents. It could be because of their usual habit; & can also be one of their tactics to disturb you. In any case, you should just ignore their comments.

Meditate before a big game - One more helpful activity that you can do before a big final or a poker tournament is to meditate. This is undoubtedly the best tool that you can implement to ensure full focus & calmness during the poker game.